First of My Kind
by AllTheDances
Summary: Originally published: 2014-10-23 ::: An unintentional idea from an unintentional prompt: what if Tywin Lannister was something like a vampire?


_Weakness_. Tywin let that truth sneak unchecked off his tongue, only to have it echo into the treeline as a whimper.

An eerie pitch of shadow loomed high above that treeline, towers of absolute black blotting out clusters of stars in the cloudless night sky.

The seat of the Stark family was a constant in the North, swathed in a history of honour and fools. More so, it was a name that stirred in his mind wary impressions that were once vivid memories.

He didn't like it here. There were reasons he rarely ventured lower than Last Hearth, and this was one: a forgotten hate.

He had turned himself around on more than one occasion, and when all else had failed, pleaded for reprieve directly from the scourge which damned him. But for every tick of doubt, for every effort to sever its influence - like hands on the shoulders of an unruly child - that ominous burden would right his direction, ignore his petulance, and wordlessly assert its dominance.

It danced in his veins: the animal he'd become. Gone was the pulse he'd been born with. Now, beyond the meat and marrow, dwelled a perpetual craving. A humming kind of hunger that carried ever onward - a debt owed to tainted sorcery.

Yet this pull was different. Something deeper than hunger, and no matter how hard he struggled against the cloying snag under his ribs, it just kept tugging. Leading him against his will, a captive in his own body.

Reluctance made no difference, he knew. Internal torment or no, if the curse that ruled him crawled to the ready there would be no fight, no opposition. He knew that too.

\- - - — —- — - — —- — - - -

So close. He was so close now he could taste it.

In a heart no longer beating hid a precious agony; growing and resonating where the rhythm had once lived. As he drew nearer, that ache swelled to consume him.

Maddening in its glory; frightening in its promise. Promise meant a resuscitation of hope, and for him that notion - bright and beautiful and utterly uncanny - had died unceremoniously centuries prior.

He had no wish to finish this journey - none. But there was something out there in the dark.

Something calling to his blood.

\- - - — —- — - — —- — - - -

Sansa leaned close to a giant heart tree; one gloved hand lingered along the frowning mouth, tracing the red stains of sap. Her eyes were closed and her lips were moving quickly, in tiny quirks. A silent appeal, it seemed.

Bundled in furs and hidden in beats by thick plumes of icy breath, the girl's face was all but invisible. Though her features shone from beneath it all at every inhale, glowing in the slivers of light much like the surrounding snow. Tywin wondered idly if perhaps she was a maiden of winter, a spirit of the North.

Such a thought would have been scoffed at when his body had held life. Now though, existing in the absence of life, the notion presented itself as hardly strange and merely an option.

The moon hung full above the godswood, after all. Anything was possible.

He tried to huff at such ridiculousness, and was awarded another whimper.

Her head shot up, jarred from her prayer, and pivoted at the waist to peer around: looking… looking. Searching for the wounded animal sharing the godswood with her.

The girl wore a look of such concern, of such palpable compassion, Tywin had no recourse but to heed her draw and step one foot then another into her line of sight.

A look once merciful hardened to leery deliberation.

They stood frozen - not of the weather, but of each other. Staring. Discerning trust and mistrust; calculating escapes and, equally, pondering their inability to move at all.

The girl angled her head as if in question, though spoke not a word.

He was made of shadows - in contrast to the white bark surrounding them - blending and fading with every pitch and flick of moonlight through dense, red canopy.

Sansa knew what she saw was a man, yet nothing like a man at all. He was an ancient; older than the mountains, it was said. She'd heard stories of him, the man who was once The Great Lion; a man of kings, who sold his life for the pride and lineage of his family. But in the end it was for naught - the sire he left behind gave way to the family's ruin, burning their legacy to the ground.

By virtue of that shame, the Lion fled north; cursed in death to hunger for the one thing he so coveted in life: Blood.

Even through his clothes she could see the faint twitch and sway of muscle; a steely strength coiled taut and waiting for release. Like an animal poised to bound away…

…Or strike.

Yet there was no other movement from the man. He remained staid; stoic and proud; impeccably groomed and completely out of place in the wilderness… in the North.

He wore no gloves or furs, and though he was draped in garments, they were thin and geared more to allow better dexterity than ward from the icy threat of winter.

In those details - dawning on the unnatural state of him - the girl seemed to remember her fear. She breathed a little more shallow, her heart picked up in tempo.

The Lion could hear the change distinctly, he could smell her disquiet.

Unbeknownst to the two, and in line with their own stillness, the night died around them.

The tense silence between them felt ominous. Gone was the usual creaking and skittering of nature.

The Lion himself seemingly drove the world into a lull: the air at his mouth remained undisturbed, his chest laid still, and the fat flakes of snow dropping lazily about did so carefully, as to avoid landing directly on the man.

 _The man_.

The beast.

\- - - — —- — - — —- — - - -

The animal in him was pacing, panting in anticipation - no matter how infinitesimal - for an opportunity to lunge. But the fidgety burn, a type of excitement that normally accompanied his craving, was ringing at a dull roar. Not so much an appetite to feed as it was the instinct to investigate this new creature.

 _To smell and taste and touch her_.

Stood tall, the Lion held himself like a long ago lord. Some frightening nobility. He smiled at the thought, a joy for the occasion. The effort played flimsy at best: a lazy curl of lips that was nowhere near pleasant.

The shadows defining his face were as sharp as his features, but his eyes stole the girl's focus when they seemed to flash incandescent in the gloom of the night.

Sansa never saw him take those first steps toward her.

"What's your name, girl?" Tywin halted mid stride as the words formed, rattled by the rusty sound of his own voice.

The woman did not move, did not flee, just tilted her head further to the side - considering, taking him in.

Whomever she was, she was fearless. Standing with a stiff kind of grace; something he could attribute to winter on most people, but this one seemed to proffer elegance like she was born to it.

The Lion slanted his own look at the girl, and with an almost tender rasp, he said, "You can't stay here forever."

Such an odd threat, both soft and sharp, offered in a tone that worked its way through her; made her warm, made her flush.

She was listening, he could see that plainly. Her mouth parted slightly, perhaps to speak, before snapping closed to a firm pink line, and Tywin wondered what the words trapped in her throat tasted like.

His eyes glittered again, and from his chest rumbled a sound so deep Sansa could feel it under her feet.

Pale and long, peeking out at him where her furs overlapped at the front, her neck was a pretty thing. The skin prickled along his shoulders at the thought of it. The back of his jaw began to salivate at the phantom feel of his mouth clamped around it…

He made to tread; softly, swiftly, shoulders hunched and - with what the girl would surely assume was a twist of moonlight - his mouth split wider.

Just as she backed herself flat against her heart tree it was as though the forest careened back into life, staggering both lion and girl.

The sound around them keened like a gale wind, but nothing moved. The world held its breath while the noise gathered like a storm; louder, creaking, whining, as though the trees themselves were trying to bend forth and speak.

A child's voice cut through the cacophony: sweet, playful… " _Run_."

Her eyes never left his, never drifted in their bravery, and Tywin felt cornered for the first time in a hundred years. Equally felt was a sinister awareness: that the child's voice issued its playful instruction to him, not her.

 _No_ …

She knew what he was, what he was not. She also knew the only reason the Lion appeared to you was to end your life. And when the noise died as fast as it kicked up, the fire-haired girl smiled something coy.

Something deadly.

As though _she_ were the animal between them.


End file.
